After two consecutive podiums in the first rounds at Jerez in July, Vinales scored just eight points over the Brno / Red Bull Ring triple headers while fighting on his Yamaha – and has yet to beat championship rival Fabio Quartararo on the track in 2020.
His Styrian Grand Prix also ended with a terrifying brake failure, forcing him to dismount after it was later found out he was ignoring Brembo’s advice to use a different braking system.
Strong as expected throughout the weekend in Misano, Vinales broke the pole lap record in qualifying with 1: 31.411 minutes and confirmed his one-lap pace at a threatening race pace.
“The only thing I want is to have fun,” said Vinales of his race prospects. “To be honest, after these three bad races, especially the last one where I had pretty big problems, I just want to enjoy. I will push from the first corner to the end.
“I’m not interested in the result. I just want to have a lot of fun on the bike, have fun with my team and try to give them the best possible performance. “
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Quartararo was only able to make third place on the grid after having just as little feeling at the front in qualifying as last year.
“Like last year, I felt so great in FP3 and last year in qualifying it was exactly the same, no feeling from the front,” explained Quartararo. “On this type of track with fast corners, if you don’t have a good feeling, you can’t really push like a real-time attack. But really happy, because I still managed to make the front row, that’s the most important thing.
“We were in the same position last year and the pace is really good. I felt a lot better on pace than last year and that’s really positive. “
Valentino Rossi, who led the FP3 at Misano, felt that Yamaha “needed” Saturday’s result after the difficult brace of Austria races.
“The Yamaha is very competitive here on this track, very strong,” said Rossi, who qualified fourth for his home race. “We needed it. We had to get back to the top to fight for the top positions because the two weekends in Austria were very difficult to manage. “